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Howdy, folks. It's been a while since my last article, but I only write articles that have a definite impact on the EarthBound community. This article is no exception.

For the past several months, I have watched as a new idea began to form within the minds of many EarthBound fans. In particular, that Giegue from EarthBound Zero is different than Giygas from EarthBound. I believe a simple fanfic then exploded this idea until it had people believing that Giegue was indeed different and that he was also Ness' father, who we never actually see, except for at the end of EarthBound Zero.

Well, I'm writing this to put an end to these ideas here and now. Of course, not everybody will believe me, but that's the case with most things in life, so I don't really care.

I'm not going to play through Mother 1 just to get a screenshot of his name, but many reliable sources have informed me this is what he is called, at least according to Nintendo's Official Mother Encyclopedia.

A great site to look for this information is Mother Online, at http://www.mna.net/mol. Unless you know Japanese, you won't get much from this site though.

Okay, simple enough. Let's look at Mother 2. Here is a snippet from the title screen.

Loosely translated, it says "Giigu's Counterattack" or even more loosely, "Giigu Strikes Back". Notice how the name "Giigu" appears in both Mother 1 *and* Mother 2. I wonder why that is. Maybe because they're the same, which would also explain why he decides to "strike back". At the end of Mother 1, Giigu vows revenge, and here he is in "Mother 2: Giigu's Counterattack". The final boss *is* called "Giigu", if you're going to ask.

By the way, if you're wondering how to pronounce "Giigu" here's how. Just say "Geeg". Honest! If you think I'm some sort of nut (which is an accurate assumption), check out this clip from EGM magazine, which contains a preview of Mother 2.

The editors refer to the final enemy as Geeg too. I'm certain other gaming magazines do this as well. Just ask anybody who knows Japanese, and they will tell you that "Giigu" is pronounced as "Geeg".

Now, let's check out EarthBound Zero. Everybody who's anybody knows the final enemy is named "Giegue". I don't know about you, but I pronounce that as "Geeg". The only reason why I think it is spelled "Giegue" is to make it look more menacing, and more like a real name. "Geeg" just doesn't look like a sinister name. It's quite obvious that this "Giegue" is the same as the "Giigu" from Mother 1, which, as I just showed, is the same as "Giigu" in Mother 2. In EarthBound Zero, Giegue also vows revenge.

Please realize that the character names in this screenshot were chosen by me, and are not the actual names.

So who is Giygas then? Well, assuming that the story didn't change from Mother 2 to EarthBound (which it didn't), he's the same foe as "Giigu" from Mother 2, which is the same as "Giigu" from Mother 1, which is the same as "Giegue". Even the name "Giygas" sounds like "Geeg". While this isn't exactly proof, there is a lot of evidence suggesting that they are the same.

Why the different name? To make it more American-ish of course. And in fact, this is evident if you look at old issues of Nintendo Power, where he is refered to as "Geek". Most likely they thought it would be more American-ish that way, but decided against it at the last minute. Heck, they changed the box art at the last minute too. Here's some Geek stuff from issue 70 of Nintendo Power:

GYIYG is obviously a reference to "Giigu" (and is pronounced the same). They just changed the name from "GYIYG" to "GIYGAS". And the screenshot in that article was taken while they were undecided about the final enemy's name.

The next question is why they were inconsistent between EarthBound Zero and EarthBound. My explanation is that EarthBound Zero is a prototype, and the text wasn't fully Americanized. That's why the text is so dry. EarthBound on the other hand, has extremely interesting text, possibly the most interesting of any video game in existence. This may be due to the different people who worked on each translation.

Ah, so Dan Owsen did the English text. He even admits that he had to change some of the text to make it more interesting for non-Japanese players.

Now, if none of what I have said so far has convinced you, then there is no hope of me changing your mind now. But what reasons do you really have to believe that Giegue is different than Giygas? Just the fact that their names are different? I've already shown that the text writers were different people, and that they spent a lot of time making EarthBound's text more interesting by making changes here and there. Not only that, Giygas' name was not determined until shortly before EarthBound was released. Before that, he went by other names. Also, as you may have seen from my site, Mother 2 to EarthBound and Back Again..., a lot of names were changed during EarthBound's translation. Among others, they changed "Bigfoot" to "Cave Boy", "Rope Man" to "Noose Man", and "Tonzura Brothers" to "Runaway Five". Even town names were changed. Why wouldn't "Giigu" be changed too? They changed the titles of the games after all!!

Other than the name differences, there is no evidence that they are different. Only conjecture about Maria having affairs and Giegue being Ness' father, which cannot be proved by fanfics or mere guessing.

I, on the other hand, have provided some hard evidence that Giegue and Giygas are one and the same, as well as evidence pertaining to why their names are different.

I think I'll stop now, this article is becoming quite lengthy. But before I go, let me assure you, nobody in the Japanese Mother community has had this argument, because the two final bosses are the same!

Other Submissions by Tomato

This is an old hack (circa 2001). It was meant to make all the game text more palatable, which it succeeds in. It was also meant to double the experience you get from enemies, but it turns out this feature doesn't work right. There are other little changes here and there as well. It's also a little buggy in places, so only try this hack if you're bored and have nothing better to do. I was planning to do more work on this hack, but it's pretty much a dead project at this point.

If you want a patch that DOES make the game easier, see http://starmen.net/mother1/easypatch